And then things moved so fast she could barely keep track – a scraping sound, her feet knocked from under her so she fell to her knees, a hand yanking her hair, and suddenly, a prick of pain at her throat.

She gazed up at Draco, her neck at such an awkward angle that she could barely breathe. The sun was directly above him, and it threw a narrow white line about his silhouette. He was reduced to a black form, his fingers digging into her scalp, the hand that held the knife at her throat absolutely steady.

She wanted to say yes, she should have been able to say yes, but instead she found herself reflecting upon the Vow he had sworn and wondering where the loopholes were in it, where there was a crack wide enough to slide a knife into her back.

One massive paw dashed it aside – she was trapped, fire at her back, the manticore blocking her escape. Its eyes gleamed with satisfaction. The tail raised, bowed over its head like a spear poised to strike.

She felt the terror of death, the deep and ferocious desperation of life, and for the first time, an Unforgiveable Curse rose in her throat like poison. It seemed for a peculiar moment that they were equal, she and it – weapons chosen, the only end the death of one of them.

Draco skidded to a halt. A plethora of emotions crossed his face, savagery, bemusement, a mask of composure.

“I was expecting to see hordes of ravaging maniacs,” he remarked.

Hermione swallowed. “Bad dreams.”

She was too aware that she was in nothing but the sheet, and right now, it felt about as substantial as a cobweb. The shadows that yawned between them could have held anything: a thousand words neither said, prophecies of tomorrow, broken promises. What they did not hold enough of was distance.

Everyone had seen Potter overthrown outside the walls. There had been only the soft thud of his body crumpling senseless to the ground, glasses askew on his nose, and then a vast, terrible silence. Everything seemed to stop: heart, breath, hope.

As the gates opened with the wail of rusty hinges, he heard the noise of the inmates: the susurrus of moans and whispers and weeping, rising up over the crash of the sea, the sound of people drowning in something far colder and deeper than mere water.

It did not touch him today. Their despair rolled off him, turned back, denied. Draco went into Azkaban like a living man into the underworld, untarnished and bright, daring to hope, daring to dream.

"It was months before they left. And I was frightened. So when I did send up the signal, you might not have seen it. Then one night..." Hermione thought back, and the realisation of just how little time had passed startled a laugh from her because it seemed a land of once upon a time and far far away. "Last week, actually – that night, I sent it up when the sky was dark."